


And You Haunt Me Rather Gently

by taking_sweet_time



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Character Death, Depression, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, M/M, Melancholy, Suffering, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-07 23:45:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taking_sweet_time/pseuds/taking_sweet_time
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis is haunted by the daisies, a great deal of time after their stems have died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And You Haunt Me Rather Gently

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry I don't even know what this was.

 

 

Louis’s quite a puddle when he first sees him.

It’s raining, icing his skin and birching him into the ground like gold.    
He’s wearing that horrible sweater, the one that he’s always thought looks horridly like cat sick but the one Harry’s always loved so much.  Matches his blush, he’s always said, and Louis’s never known what he’s meant by that, but it made Harry happy to see him in it, and he wears it today.    
He’s wearing the soft cream trousers that still burn with Harry’s detergent, a bit sharp but soft and fluttery like daisy petals.  Those are here too, lying about the grass in careful bundles that are thrown together much too clumsily for Harry’s liking.

He’s a sore thumb, a mirage of pale alabaster and wine swimming in a sea of shuddering black shoulders, and he’s never been more grateful for it.  Maybe that’s how Harry finds him today, murmurs soft apologies as he ambles clumsily through sightless crowds and shuffles timidly to Louis’s side.

“Hi,” Harry breathes, tucking a stray curl behind his ear.  They haven’t grown in his absence.  “Am I too late?”

“No,” Louis hums, hands tight in his pockets, barely hiding his knuckles.  They’re red. “Just starting.”  Harry falls quiet, thoughtful as he and Louis listen to the droning sermon, the sobs of friends and families who never knew him well, avoid the gape of the lovely cherry case lying in the ground.  Beside Louis, Harry shifts slightly.

 

 

Sometimes, Louis doesn’t see him, doesn’t hear him, but he can feel him.  Most often, he’s with others, tea with his mum as the two of them rifle through musty drawers and wash week-old dishes – his mother babbles anxiously about rent, about the boys, about the twins, about Anne, but Louis can feel him, not quite hovering, but observing, polite and shy.  He’s perching on a counter, he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching Louis’s fingers shake around a familiar coffee cup.  He’s warm, not intangible.

They watch movies together sometimes, whether anyone else is there or not.  A couple of weeks after Jay’s last visit, Louis and Zayn are tangled together in a gentle cuddle on Niall’s sofa while Liam rests his head against Louis’s knees as they keep an eye on the Manchester match.  Louis looks up to check the time, and he’s there, grinning like a child and swinging his legs off of the arm of the sofa.  Louis smiles back, and Harry wiggles his fingers in that stupid little wave.  Blushes.  

“C’mere, you,” Louis says quietly, patting the empty seat beside him, and as Harry scrambles over the cushions and settles into a gangly mess of limbs, Louis extends a hand, wraps his fingers over Harry’s thumb.  Harry squeezes back.  Liam and Zayn exchange an odd glance.

 

 

A thunderstorm marks the first time Harry’s cried.  Louis’s shuddering in his blankets, alone and driven mad by the clouds peeling at the earth past his window.  He hasn’t lived a storm on his own in years.  He won’t tonight.  

“Baby,” he hears the feathers, and he peers over the edges of his fingers and through damp eyelashes to see this angel scooting hesitantly across the mattress, the blankets lying still in his place.  “Louis, baby.”  Louis crawls into Harry’s arms, sobs, feels the broad hand up and down the stepping stones of his spine.  Smells daisy petals.

“Don’t leave me again,” Louis whispers, Harry’s lips dotting quick, anxious bandages up and down his cheek, his neck, his chest.  Weave him back together, weave, weave.  

“No,” Harry murmurs.  Kisses his mouth. 

 

 

“What will it be like,” Louis muses one day, curled in Harry’s lap, running fingertips over feint skin.  “When I die?  Will people just forget about me?”

“Never,” Harry says, laughing quietly as if this is the funniest idea he’s ever heard.  

“You’d remember me?”

“I wouldn’t be here to remember you, silly,” Harry remind him.  Smiles, as if they’re talking about the weather.

 

 

Three months have passed when Louis’s mum snaps.  

“Please, just talk to someone,” she begs, horrible sobs heaving from her chest as she clutches her only son’s arm, “Louis, this is so dangerous.” 

“I know, I know what’s going on, I know what’s happening to me,” Louis pants, eyes shut tight as he thrashes, struggling against his mother.  “You can’t make me see anyone, mum, I won’t do it, I won’t leave him.”

“Seeing things that aren’t there,” Jay weeps, holding Louis’s hand tight.  “Talking to people only you can hear.”

“No,” Louis whimpers, face pinched, shoulders curling.  “No, mum, you’re wrong…”

“He’s gone, Louis,” Jay sobs.  “He’s gone, he isn’t going to come back.”

“No," Louis weeps, "Harry, help me,” he calls to the curly-haired angel looming in the door way, his own face shattered and shining with pearls, sad.

“Lou,” Harry whispers, shoulders shaking.  

Jay cries.

 

 

It happens very slowly.  Some nights, Harry is clear as glass, solid in Louis’s arms, warm against his cheek, daisies lovely in the air.  He hears his voice, listens to him sing him to sleep, sing about jumpers the colour of cat sick and blue eyes.

Some nights, Louis gropes in the darkness, squeezes his eyes shut and feels, and yes, he’s there, but he can’t grab him, can’t touch his palm, can’t kiss his lips, can’t feel the flutter of his eyelashes on his cheek.  

Some nights, he isn't there at all.

“Where are you,” he finds himself breathing, alone and so, so lost.  Zayn’s stopped coming by the house.

“Harry?” he’ll sing sometimes, pouring milk into his tea or tugging a shirt over his arms.  He doesn’t hear him very often anymore.  Feels him sometimes, yes, feels that warmth, than presence there in the room that haunts his heart, keeps him steady, keeps him sane.  

Then again, as the rooms floods with cold and he feels no luminescent arms tucking him close, he wonders if he ever was.

 

 

It’s Liam who finds him, calls the ambulance.  Sees the red of the bathtub, sobs over his chest, crying and crying, “ _Not you too,_ _Not my Louis._ ”  Yet it’s not Liam’s face that Louis sees as the sharp bite of his veins fades from his wrists, the edges of his vision matting like the ivory of sunlight.  

“You’re here,” he feels his lips moving, and he feels warm hands cup his cheeks again, cry against his shoulder.

“Oh, Louis,” Harry whispers.

“It hurts,” Louis whimpers, blue eyes wide and still, and he vaguely feels the heels of Liam’s hands beating into his chest like a drum.  This drum has always been Harry’s, though, and he’s halfway back into his heart.

“I know, baby, you’re almost there,” Harry murmurs, drops little kisses like rain up and down his bare neck, his shoulders, clammy and white as the last of their colours seeps onto the porcelain.  “You’ve been so brave.”

“I know,” Louis breaths, sees white.

 

 

He doesn’t go to his funeral like Harry had; doesn’t want to see his mother, the faces of Zayn, of Liam, of Niall.  Doesn’t want to see his sisters.  He’ll see them again someday.  

“Look, Lou, it’s a daisy,” Harry smiles, voice bright and quiet as he stoops to pluck a petal from the nebular field, threads it through Louis’s hair.

“Enough, you,” Louis giggles, and he’s beginning to feel it, the air diffusing through his imaginary cells like an inflating balloon.  “I’m going to float away,” he adds serenely, his voice ghosting in the air that is not there.

“Me too,” Harry whispers, his hand still clutching Louis’s tight.  “I wonder what heaven’s like.”

“Hmm, we’ll see when we get there,” Louis shrugs.  He’s entertaining him; he doesn’t bother to mention that they – at least Louis – have already arrived.  The beautiful boy’s skin is sunlight beneath his fingers.

Harry smiles, looks at the daisies.  

They both vanish.

 

  
   



End file.
